


The Mixed Tape

by hiza-chan (callunavulgari)



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-21
Updated: 2012-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-04 01:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/hiza-chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is morning. That's when I spend the most time thinking 'bout what I've given up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Mixed Tape

**Author's Note:**

> Written for smoking_panda at my music meme.
> 
> This is morning  
> That's when I spend the most time  
> Thinking 'bout what I've given up  
> This is a warning  
> When you start the day just to close the curtains  
> You're thinking 'bout what I've given up

Sometimes, when the day is cold and the sun is drowned in wet, grey clouds Zuko wonders why he really changed. He knows all the reasons, knows what people believe. His uncle had been there as a constant reminder that the Fire Nation didn't have to be all anger and domination, a gentle nudge telling him that he really didn't have to live this life. He'd seen the way people lived, talked to the Avatar and his friends and learned the horrors of what the Fire Nation truly preached.  
  
He knows that what he did was right. There are children with homes now because of what he did. The pain is subsiding, the flood waters slowly abating, and he rules the Fire Nation now, already praised as the most beloved Fire Lord in over a century. He loves his people, loves them like he loves Katara and Sokka, Toph and all the others. He is a good ruler, but sometimes he doesn't think that anyone really understands what he'd had to give up along the way.  
  
He misses his family. Misses his mother's kind smiles most of all, and remembers with a sharp kind of pain that the searches are not proving very fruitful. He misses his father. Remembers the burn of flame against his skin and _wants it back_.  
  
He visits Azula in prison at least once a month, but she's stopped talking to him. Silent as the grave, the only sign of life coming when static crackles across her features, proof to how unstable she's become. She isn't safe, and even if he wanted to let her free, he wouldn't be able to. She'd hurt too many people.  
  
He's starved for his family, misses them as much as he hates them and for the life of him he can't remember _why_ he'd given it all up- and then Aang strokes a hand across the scar on his chest, wraps one slim leg around Zuko's hip, squints at the sun shining past silken curtains and Zuko remembers. The Avatar lets out a sigh that chills Zuko's chest, and when he opens his eyes again the curtain is back in place and Aang is smiling sleepily up at him.  
  
Aang doesn't have a family either, and for now, it's enough to have the Avatar curled up next to him, breathing his own life into Zuko. 


End file.
